"Owain" wrote in message
...
"Mary Fisher" wrote
| Even less aggressively, leave the frozen whatever on a plate
| on the kitchen counter. It will thaw. No energy cost.

Considerable energy cost in driving to the chinese takeaway on christmas
day
because the cat got up at 4 am and helped itself to the turkey, as
neighbours once found out.

(You and I would probably have just hidden the gnawed bits with an extra
chipolata.)

We ate the cat.

Mary

Owain

"Andrew McKay" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 18:42:03 +0100, "Mary Fisher"
wrote:

Well, perhaps I'm immortal.

Oh-oh. I get anxious when I see someone owning up to being
IMMortal.....

You'll be telling us how to install a combi boiler with a
recirculating air vent next

I don't WANT a combi!

And I don't know how to install it either.

Doesn't it come with instructions? You could follow those.

:-)

Mary

Andrew

"Steve Firth" wrote in message
. ..
Mary Fisher wrote:


I doubt that there's a greater risk than going on car journey.

Yeh? Well you'd be wrong, unless you drive like a complete wally that
is. You're safer in the car than you are at home.

I don't know the stats for deaths due to eating home prepared meat but I'd
bet that they're not as high as deaths from road accidents.

I know that accidents in the home are many but the thread was specifically
about the danger of heating frozen cooked meat. I doubt that there's a
greater risk than going on a car journey.

Mary

"Steve Firth" wrote in message
.. .
Andy Dingley wrote:

To be safe you need
to ensure that the chicken is cooked and then frozen _rapidly_ -
before bugs have time to breed in the cooling chicken.

Close but no cigar. Putting hot chicken in the freezer isn't a good
idea. Let it cool after cooking before freezing. Make sure that it is
reheated thoroughly after removal from the freezer.

The biggest hazard is cross contamination. People tend to have filthy
habits that they don't realise are filthy habits. Don't use the same
knife or the same cutting board for raw meat and cooked meat. That's
where most cases of food poisoning originate.

Interesting. That's what I said.

Mary

"Mary Fisher" wrote in message
et...

"Owain" wrote in message
...
"Mary Fisher" wrote
| Even less aggressively, leave the frozen whatever on a plate
| on the kitchen counter. It will thaw. No energy cost.

Considerable energy cost in driving to the chinese takeaway on christmas
day
because the cat got up at 4 am and helped itself to the turkey, as
neighbours once found out.

(You and I would probably have just hidden the gnawed bits with an extra
chipolata.)

We ate the cat.


My packet of bacofoil doesn't quote cat ... !
D'ya give it 55 minutes/Kg @ 190 degC?

--

Brian

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 17:02:39 +0100, Mary Fisher wrote:


"Ian Stirling" wrote in message
news:4173bd47$0$47999$ed2e19e4@ptn-nntp- For small

snip long winded stuff

This works very, very well for stuff like stews, you just keep it on
full power, stirring every minute to break up the frozen lumps.

Why b other, for stews? It will thaw in the stewpot.

For whole chickens, this of course doesn't work, I leave those in the
fridge for a couple of days to unfreeze.

Alternatively, a bit less aggressively, if your oven can do fan mode,
with just the fan blowing ambient air over them, that's good for
defrosting
small stuff.

Even less aggressively, leave the frozen whatever on a plate on the
kitchen counter. It will thaw. No energy cost.

Mary

I'm with Mary generally on this topic and related parts.

We, as a country, are becoming entirely too ghey these days...

We are supposed to bleach everything, disinfect floors every 5 minutes,
put bloo stuff in the bog and eat everything within 2 days of purchase...

Until we have no immune systems left...

It's a matter of being sensible.

I've just eaten a lump of emmental (sp?) cheese that went 2 days past it's
use-by date (gasp). FFS - cheese is a method of preservation anyway and
hard cheeses usually only get mouldy - that does no harm to most people.

I also remember having a rather nice whole salami a friend brought back
from Hungary, in a suitcase. Storage instructions: hang in ventilated
space out of direct sunlight. Kept for weeks (probably good for months,
but I ate it!)

If freezing fresh food, do it soon after buying (that's just better,
obviously). If freezing cooked food, make sure it's well cooked, then cool
and insert into freezer. If freezer has a "superfreeze" knob, use it.

I wouldn't, for example, put hot food into a freezer - it will heat up
everything else compromising your other goodies.

The one thing about freezing fresh food is ice crystal formation usually
bursts the cell walls of the foodstuff. This makes the food taint quicker
when thawed - so cook that thawed uncooked chicken promptly. If cooked,
you probably already knackered the cellular structure, so no difference,
except you've cooked it and killed the bugs.

I find no problem with using a slow cooker on frozen stuff. Two things
contribute to an upset stomach - bugs and the toxins they produce.

Assuming you slow cook (use the auto-high heat option if you have it) then
the bugs aren't going to have long to live before you kill them, leaving
some residual toxins. If that's acceptibly low, no probs. Just make sure
that the food is piping hot (right to the middle) before you eat it.

Mary's point about that not working for whole chickens is probably due to
the lack of convection of hot liquids inside the chicken. There's a high
thermal mass and a bulky insulated body so it won't heat in a sufficiently
short time. For chunks (esp. with no bones) or mince, I see no issues
there. My mother regularly slow-casseroled from frozen and she was
qualified in domestic science and ran a student hostel in London in her
younger days.

Also bear in mind that the body gets used to its local environment - I'm
usually averagely careful when cooking for my family - but extra careful
as a courtesy if cooking for visitors. No-one's died yet. Any my baby
daughter is probably busy eating random passing bugs off the carpet as we
speak... (she has a taste for ants, and nearly had an earwig the other
day, before mummy noticed).

Back onto the OP's precise point: I usually don't eat frozen cooked meats,
but since he raised it, I don't see any wrong with it if the meat was well
cooked beforehand and frozen promptly after cooling. After all, that
Cristmas turkey usually languishes in the fridge for 4-5 days before final
consumption.

Cheers

Timbo

Brian Sharrock wrote:

My packet of bacofoil doesn't quote cat ... !
D'ya give it 55 minutes/Kg @ 190 degC?

*Suspicious look*

Him using kigglerams. We'm don' loike kigglerams 'ere! An' we'm only usin'
centigrades for *low* tempratchers.

Si

Meats are high risk foods. They should be frozen quickly after
cooking, not a day later, and always heated through thoroughly after
defrosting.

I must admit, I wouldn't conceive of eating meat from the freezer that isn't
thoroughly cooked AFTER defrosting. I would take some convincing that it is
safe to cook before, but not after freezing.

Christian.

"Christian McArdle" wrote in message
. net...
Meats are high risk foods. They should be frozen quickly after
cooking, not a day later, and always heated through thoroughly after
defrosting.

I must admit, I wouldn't conceive of eating meat from the freezer that
isn't
thoroughly cooked AFTER defrosting. I would take some convincing that it
is
safe to cook before, but not after freezing.

Christian.

It's horses for courses ... (quickly point out that one _doesn't_
eat equines) ... there's nothing wrong IMHO with slicing
meat off a cooked joint and freezing it in appropriate
containers; then one can make sarnies of whatever you've
got in the freezer - ham, pork, beef, etc.
When using the stored items for sandwiches, one only
extracts a few slices and -if you remember in time- let
them thaw 'naturally' ; or if you're in a hurry- use the
microwave-generating device and jiggle their water-molecules.
Naturally, such meat is not cooked AFTER freezing. It's
cooked, cooled, sliced and frozen in as hygienic as kitchen
as one can accomplish. Thereafter extracted, thawed, slapped
between two slices of bread and eaten! You know it makes sense.

{btw: pork sausages are good for this too - cook a big batch then
freeze).
In my experience sausages are the items occupying the
critical path on cooking a fried breakfast and having a
supply that you've bogof'd at the supermarket cooked and frozen
makes sense. There's one big cook time, one washing up but
lots of eating opportunities.

--

Brian

"Owain" wrote in message
...
"Mary Fisher" wrote
| Freeze it as fast as you can after purchase - don't
| let it sit around warm which is when the bacteria
| multiply.
| Hey! Don't freeze it while it's still warm!

What about a blast chiller/freezer or, failing that, a good squirt with a
CO2 fire-extinguisher[1]

Owain

[1] AKA 'the fire-extinguisher formerly coloured black'

Just what was the logic of changing the colour coding of fire extinguishers
to just plain red?

Dave

"Dave" wrote
| [1] AKA 'the fire-extinguisher formerly coloured black'
| Just what was the logic of changing the colour coding of
| fire extinguishers to just plain red?

The fire-extinguisher manufacturers took a moment from considering their
profits to convince the government that lots of new extinguishers would be a
valuable contribution to safe-tee?

Owain

"Mick." wrote in message
...
Hi all,
I am a 60 year old male living alone and like most of us out at work all
day!
I have been buying fresh cooked chickens, normally 2 at a time,
removing all the skin and bone, portioning it and when cool freezing it to
use in sandwiches ect as I need.
it has been suggested that freezing fresh cooked chicken could result in
food poisoning.
any advice welcomed.

Everything has some danger but this doesn't sound worse than any other form
of freezing food. Carry on as is.

In message 0, mike
ring writes
"Mary Fisher" wrote in
. net:


it sounds a good way to proceed. Freeze it as fast as you can after
purchase - don't let it sit around warm which is when the bacteria
multiply.

Hey! Don't freeze it while it's still warm!

Mary

If he can do that he's a better man than me

(Tries to remember the words to Eskimo Nell)

"I'm going forth to the frozen North
Where the peckers are hard and strong,
Back to the land of the frozen stand
Where the nights are six months long.

"It's hard as tin when they put it in
In the land where spunk is spunk.
Not a trickling stream of lukewarm cream,
But a solid, frozen chunk.


No idea what they're talking about ...



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geoff